The Long Return

For a long time, I believed my life was a search. Like most people, I assumed there was a version of me waiting somewhere in the future – a wiser, calmer, more complete person whom I had not yet become. I imagined that if I read enough books, travelled enough places, built meaningful things, loved deeply enough, or suffered honestly enough, I would eventually arrive at this destination. One day, after enough living, I would finally find myself. It is an appealing idea because it gives our wandering a purpose. It transforms life into a treasure hunt where the greatest prize is our own identity.

But over time, I began to suspect that the metaphor itself was misleading. What if there is nothing to find? Or perhaps more interestingly, what if the very act of searching prevents us from seeing what has always been here? The words we use quietly shape the way we think. We often say, "I'm trying to find myself," without ever asking what those words actually imply. To find something usually means it already exists somewhere else. If I lose my phone, I search because the phone continue to exist independent of me. If I lose my way in a city, the destination remains exactly where it has always been. Finding is simply the act of locating something that is already there.

When I apply that metaphor to the human self (especially to myself), however, it begins to fall apart. Where exactly am I searching? What is this "self" that supposedly exists somewhere beyond my present experience? And perhaps the strangest question of all : who is doing the searching? If I am searching for myself, then there appear to be two of me – the seeker and the one being sought. The more I thought about it, the more the language seemed to collapse under its own weight.

Perhaps this explains why so many people (of course inc. myself) spend decades moving from one identity to another without ever feeling settled. We change careers, cities, relationships, beliefs, hobbies, even countries. Every new beginning quietly carries the hope that this version of life will finally reveal who we really are. Yet the feeling rarely lasts. The recognized executive eventually realizes that achievement cannot answer existential questions. The artist discovers that creativity does not dissolve loneliness. The spiritual seeker sometimes finds that even enlightenment can become another identity to collect. Maybe the problem is not that we are making the wrong choices. Maybe the problem lies in assuming that identity is an object waiting to be discovered somewhere outside our present experience.

This led me toward a different metaphor - one that feels both simpler and deeper. Instead of finding myself, perhaps life is about uncovering myself. At first, the distinction appears insignificant, almost semantic. Yet beneath those two words lie entirely different ways of understanding human existence. Finding suggests movement outward. It asks me to gather experiences, acquire knowledge, construct identities, and hope that one day all the scattered pieces will somehow assemble into a coherent whole. Uncovering, on the other hand, suggests movement inward through subtraction rather than addition. It assumes that nothing essential has been lost. It has merely been buried beneath layers accumulated over years : expectations inherited from family, ambitions borrowed from society, fears learned through experience, labels handed to me by institutions, and stories repeated so often that they begin to feel like truth.

In that sense, growth is not primarily about becoming someone new. It is about removing what was never truly mine. A sculptor does not manufacture the statue from nothing. The marble already contains countless possibilities, and the artist's work is to patiently remove everything that does not belong. Remember Michelangelo's famous idea ? Who said : "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." He wasn't finding the statue. He believed he was removing what wasn't the statue. (that's my interpretation). Perhaps human life resembles sculpture more than construction. We spend so much of our lives trying to add to ourselves – more success, more recognition, more certainty, more possessions, more knowledge – that we rarely stop to ask whether wisdom might lie in removing rather than accumulating.

As children, we begin life with remarkable simplicity. We laugh without worrying how we appear. We ask questions without calculating whether they sound intelligent. We experience moments before we learn to judge them. Gradually, however, the world teaches us who we ought to become. Many of those lessons are necessary. Civilization requires language, discipline, responsibility, and cooperation. Yet alongside those gifts, we also inherit unnecessary burdens. We begin performing competence instead of pursuing understanding. We start protecting our reputation more carefully than our integrity. We slowly become occupied by imagined audiences, constantly wondering how our lives appear rather than how they actually are. Almost invisibly, identities accumulate around us until they become difficult to distinguish from ourselves.

I am my profession. I am my achievements. I am my failures. I am my nationality. I am my beliefs. I am my possessions. I am the story I tell others. Each of these identities serves a practical purpose. Society cannot function without names, roles, and responsibilities. The mistake begins only when we confuse these useful descriptions with our actual being. A business card is not a person. A résumé is not a consciousness. A biography is not a life.

This confusion often becomes visible during moments of transition. The end of a deliberate career, retirement, the collapse of a relationship, loss of loved-ones, illness, failure, or even extraordinary success can unexpectedly expose how much of our identity depended upon external structures. When one of those structures disappears, we feel as though we ourselves have disappeared. But perhaps nothing essential has vanished at all. Perhaps only a label has. The discomfort comes not because we have lost ourselves, but because we mistook the label for the self.

I once believed life was asking me to become someone. Today, I suspect it is asking something much quieter : To carry less. To pretend less. To fear less. And, to see more. Perhaps that is all authenticity has ever meant – not creating a truer self, but ceasing to live as a false one.

Thanks for dropping by !

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Disclaimer : Everything written above, I owe to the great minds I’ve encountered and the voices I’ve heard along the way.